Body horror

I'm writing this with a perceptual hole in my left cheek. A couple of hours ago I had a biopsy which involved a local anaesthetic to allow the maxillofacial surgeon to take a tissue sample from the inside of my mouth. As a result I'm drinking a glass of water and half expecting it to dribble out the left hand side of my mouth which I could swear was wide open to the elements. It's just like the feeling you get after a dental anaesthetic only more so.

I don't exactly know how much flesh they took or what they're sending it away to be tested for, but apparently it will take a few weeks. Still that's not too bad. They had to send my DNA away to Wales once and that took a month and a half.

I'm continually disappointed with what medicine can and can't do. This isn't an attack on the health service of any one country as I'm sure things are the same anywhere. It's simply that 21st century medicine just isn't good enough. Perhaps I feel this because I've been born before my time; however it's more likely to be just because I've watched too much Star Trek over the years. It seems absurd to me that they have to physically cut bits out of me and (probably) dissolve them in test tubes when all McCoy, Crusher or Bashir would have to do would be wave a tricorder at me and then stick me on the dermal regenerator for thirty seconds.

Maybe I'm being ungrateful; after all I'm not living in the eighteenth century when I would have stood a good chance of having my leg hacked off by a fop with a rusty saw or being dead by now anyway. It's just that physical intervention in the meat machine still seems so primitive. Can't I just snort a a swarm of pre-programed nanobots?

It's not exactly unusual for someone to be freaked out by surgery, even if all I'm talking about today is the removal a few scraps of tissue and a couple of dissolving stitches. The problem for me is that it always makes me start questioning my identity; who and even what I actually AM. If all I am is my physical body, then haven't I just lost part of myself? I do hope it was nothing important.

Once the body horror takes hold then I start noticing my machinehood more and more. I lie there at night listening to my organic pump and ventilator and worry about what would happen if one of them just stopped. I start analysing my own thought processes, wondering if I'll catch my brain out making a processing error or whether I can force a soft reboot.

I wonder if there's a different OS I could run? I'd even settle for a service patch.

Popular posts from this blog

The Weird Case of Weirdcase

Image
This may well end up being one of the oddest and perhaps most anal-retentive blog posts I've ever written, but it's an anomaly I noticed early in life and have never been able to find a satisfactory answer for.  Perhaps unsurprisingly it involves the London Underground tube map. As I've discussed elsewhere the iconic tube map captured my imagination at an early age and it was at this early age that the anomaly itself was in full swing.  It was all to do with the way the stations were labelled. Up until the end of H C Beck's reign as tube map designer the station names on the map were all written in uppercase. Presumably all the better to read you with – although not if you have dyslexia. Unfortunately at that time accessibility wasn't high on the list of London Transport's priorities, as can be seen from the fact no stations had step free access – despite the fact that so many of them had been originally been built with lifts. Nevertheless, the all uppercase pa...
Read more

Talking shit

Image
One of the things people say about me is that I'm quiet. Sometimes this is a criticism, other times not. I've already explained that part of the reason for this is because I find small talk difficult . Well, not just difficult, I find it pointless. If there's something worth discussing, I'm quite capable of amputating the hindquarters of a member of Equus africanus asinus with my garrulousness. Some people just can't help themselves though. As Douglas Adams once said " if they don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working ". I usually come across them whilst I'm out and about, on public transport or in shops. You can hardly call it eavesdropping; to avoid overhearing these types you really have to be listening to Napalm Death on your iPod. Its incredible just how much you can overhear without picking up any genuine content. It's all filler, conversational fluff designed to prevent the other person getting a word in edgeways and...
Read more

The Invisible Sign

Image
For a long time I was conviced that I was simply rubbish at life. Throw me into a social situation with a whole bunch of humans and I didn't have the first idea how to even begin to attempt to join in. People would seem to collapse into these stable little groups of two or three leaving me floating around like a stray electron. Against my best instincts I often tried attaching myself to these groups but joining in with the conversation was impossible. Besides, I really felt like I was interrupting. It was rude . Even if I did dare to say something I'd get odd looks. I still consider my crowning achievement in this Biggest Outsider Challenge to be when I ended up spending time standing around on my own at the very bash being held for me leaving a job I'd been in for 16 years... Now that was impressive. Of course well-intentioned people kept telling me to try harder, giving me tips and tricks, but nothing really seemed to work. I'd hear variations of "We all feel aw...
Read more